will you not do it when Maryska asks you?" She pressed her hot cheek upon his hand and held his hands as though she never would release them. If her confessions startled him, he perceived in them an acquaintanceship with life and its realities far surpassing his own. He had led a humdrum existence enough apart from his cricket; but here was one who could lift the veil of romance as no story-book had done. The word pictures of the joyous life moved him strangely by their suggestions of a freedom which was all-embracing; of a garden of love whereon the sun would ever shine! And from that, it was like him to tumble suddenly to realities and to remember the loaves and the fishes. She must be very hungry, he thought. What course more obvious than to take her to the hotel, and to give her some food? "By Jove! I forgot all about it," he cried, lifting her on to her feet, and so snatching at her hat. "We'll go to the Metropole and have some grub, Gipsy! Aren't you hungry, little wild cat? Don't you think you could eat me? Come along, then. It will be time to talk about all this afterwards. We can wire the Silvesters as we go; let 'em do what they like, Gipsy. I shan't part with you now; never again, I swear." She shook her head, and was but half satisfied. The kindly minister of the gospel stood to her for an ogre who would make light of the Belle Étoile, but much of that ancient office beginning with "Dearly beloved," and ending with the ecclesiastical blessing. II Gordon Silvester was a man who had lived forty-five years of his life without excitements, and had then been plunged into them headlong. It was a great thing for a man, whose only diversion hitherto had been the weekly disputations with the deacons or the quarterly disagreement with the organist, to find himself suddenly upon public platforms, cheek by jowl with the great men of the world, who pleaded for the supreme blessing which could come upon humanity, the blessing of peace. The notoriety had fallen to the plodding minister after many years, and henceforth he had been up to his eyes in the papers, the pamphlets and other paraphernalia of the pacific propaganda. The _réclame_ of it all delighted him. He became almost a hustler, and was at war with every whisper which deplored the ancient habit and the paths of ease.